In today's blog I'll be imitating a round table discussion with three authors focusing on a writer's writing process. To best simulate a discussion I will be using quotes from the following texts; Teach Writing as a Process Not a Product (Don Murray) -- introduction is not required reading, Against Vanity: In Praise of Revision (Mary Karr) , Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life | pp. 28 -34 | Short Assignments & Shitty First Drafts (Anne Lamott). All these authors have interesting ideologies, and words about the writing process, and so with that I'm eager to hear what they have to say.
Mary Karr starts with, "Reading through history cultivates in a writer a standard of quality higher than the marketplace. You can be a slave to current magazines or a slave to history. History’s harder, but also more stable—and the books are better because they’ve been culled over time." "Though I understand that we can learn from past writers and mimic their style, but we are not them. We live in a different time, a different society, different technology, different psychology and physiology We can not always be looking to the past for help or answers," I replied. And to wrap my point with a quote from John F. Kennedy, "Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future." "Writing is the act of producing a first draft. It is the fastest part of the process, and the most frightening, for it is a commitment," explains author Don Murray. "I agree that it can be frightening, but not because it's a commitment. In fact since it is just the opposite, a first draft You haven't poured your heart and soul into that story yet. And because you haven't It is easier to start over, from scratch if you turn out not liking what you've written. Your first draft is like a pre-test, you take it in order to get a feel for how the story would be. And if you don't like boom, you can change it. None of it is set in stone," I proclaim. "E. L. Doctorow once said that 'writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don’t have to see where you’re going, you don’t have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice about writing, or life, I have ever heard," states Anne Lamott. "That is amazing advice. I agree that those first lines are some of the hardest to write. They set the pace, tone and plot for the rest of the lines to come. And so people get caught up on them and become overwhelmed. But once they write those first lines and carry them a bit, if later down the line they decide they don't like them, then it becomes a simple revision," I add.
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